UK coronavirus testing chief admits there are still no plans to test care homes every week

THE UK coronavirus testing chief, Professor John Newton, admitted there are still no plans to test all care homes residents and staff members on a weekly basis despite calls to do so by care homes providers.

We will use your email address only for sending you newsletters. Please see our Privacy Notice for details of your data protection rights.

There are no plans yet for the weekly coronavirus testing of care home residents and staff, the Government's testing chief has said. Professor John Newton, from Public Health England, who is leading the Government's Covid-19 testing response, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "We are rolling out testing to everybody in care homes and the value of that is to understand how the infection has spread.

Trending

"It's a very dynamic infection, the numbers are in fact falling. So before you decide whether you need to test every member of staff every week, we need to understand how the infection has spread already."

He added: "We need to know how to protect people best, how to support care homes and that information is still coming in and I think it would be premature to decide exactly what is required now."

Professor Newton continued: "We need to design our testing programme for the future not for the past and that's where the antibody tests are important because they will tell us who has had it, where the risk lies and how we can support care homes best."

Coronavirus UK: Weekly testing of all residents and staff could help ease outbreak in care homes (Image: GETTY)

It comes as Sam Monaghan, chief executive of care provider MHA, told BBC Radio 4's Today programme 3 percent of staff and 5 percent of residents did not show Covid-19 symptoms but then tested positive.

He argued weekly testing of all residents and staff could help ease the Covid-19 outbreak in care homes.

He added: "If you have got people walking around the home, interacting with others, then you are going to have that real risk of continuing to bring the infection in.

"And with the relaxation of some of the lockdown measures out in the community then there could be the potential for some of our staff to then be more susceptible to picking up the virus and bringing it into our homes."

Figures seen by the BBC show of the 28 MHA care homes involved in a Government pilot of whole-home testing, 20 were found to have at least one member of staff or resident who were asymptomatic but tested positive for Covid-19.

He added: "What we're saying is either once a week or once a fortnight. Some of the research that seems to have been done would suggest that weekly would be the most effective way.

"Just two weeks ago we had a home where there had been no infections throughout the whole of the pandemic. We had a case develop in one of our residents, they started to show symptoms, they were tested and found to be positive.

"None of the residents had been in or out of hospital, there was no other way that it could have come in and yet none of the staff were presenting any symptoms and at that point it was before the whole home-testing procedure was in.

Related articles

"There was a real reluctance to test staff, they were going to test the residents but they were not going to test the staff. But that was the most highly likely way the infection could have come into the home."

Excess deaths in care homes during the coronavirus pandemic have peaked and "come down a long way", England's chief medical officer confirmed on Thursday.

Professor Chris Whitty said there was a clear peak in excess deaths in hospitals in early April in England and Wales, followed by care homes.

The Government adviser told the Downing Street press conference: "If you look at care homes, the other thing which people are rightly very concerned about... the care home deaths have peaked and come down a long way.

"But that peak was slightly later - one to two weeks after the peak in hospitals."